Marking the #WorkEqual Day of Action on the Gender Pay Gap

Marking the #WorkEqual Day of Action on the Gender Pay GapMartina Quinn2018-12-11T09:53:03+00:00

Today is the #WorkEqual Day of Action to highlight the gender pay gap.

#WorkEqual is a campaign we developed with our long-standing client, Dress for Success Dublin, and it has run every November for the past three years.

What is the gender pay gap?

The gender pay gap is the disparity in the average hourly earnings of men and women. The pay gap in Ireland currently stands at 14 per cent, so effectively, from today, women work for free for the rest of the year.

The gender pay gap is linked to a wide range of cultural, legal, social and economic factors. While it is sometimes simplistically reduced to a ‘motherhood penalty’, in truth, it is caused by a range of interlinked issues, such as:

• Cultural conditioning and stereotypes;
• Lack of adequate childcare supports;
• Unequal parental leave;
• Poor skills in relation to salary negotiation;
• A culture of secrecy around pay disclosure; and
• Barriers to women’s progression at all levels of their career.

So the pay gap is a much more complex issue than the concept of ‘equal pay for equal work’, which is already enforced in Irish law. On the contrary, legislation to tackle the gender pay gap has been proposed by both the government and a group of Opposition Party Senators, but has yet to pass into law.

#WorkEqual

Dress for Success Dublin’s annual #WorkEqual campaign aims to raise awareness about the gender pay gap and the measures that can be taken to address it. In recent weeks, we’ve noticed a slew of media commentators denying the gap exists at all (despite independent, impartial statistics to the contrary!), so raising awareness of this issue remains an important challenge.

For the 2018 #WorkEqual campaign – and in partnership with the great team at Dress for Success Dublin and supporters like Senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee, Cllr. Claire Byrne and journalist Jim Carroll – we’ve organised:

• A ‘Banter’ event at the Liquor Rooms in Dublin city centre (beginning this evening at 6.30pm), which will see Jim Carroll, Sonya Lennon, Senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee, journalist Mark Paul and activist Deborah Somorin discussing solutions to the gender pay gap (you can still get tickets here or on the door tonight);
• Awareness-raising activities with members of Dublin City Council next Monday, 19th November;
• Briefings at the European Parliament on Tuesday, 27th November; and
• An online awareness campaign, encouraging members of the public to show their support for ending the gender pay gap by sharing their thoughts online today (and throughout the month of November) using the #WorkEqual hashtag.

As a female-led business, this is one client campaign that is very close to our hearts. Make sure to join the online conversations today and show your support for ending the gender pay gap!